lizmicik.com

I’m no astrologist. I’ve never even done any marketing work for one, or I would know a lot more about the science behind that daily horoscope than I do.  And, even though I do read my horoscope,  I can’t say I usually remember it five minutes later.

But there is a word that intrigued me enough when I first saw it in a horoscope to look it up. The word was “retrograde.” It’s a scientific term referring to the relative motion of two objects. In astrology it’s used to cover the whole period of time that a planet appears to be  moving backwards, away from the earth.  Here’s how the Astrology Weekly dictionary defines its effects:

It is generally considered that a transiting planet is more likely to develop its negative qualities when it is in retrograde. That it is turning back for a recheck of ground already covered need not necessarily be bad, except for the fact that the future is held in abeyance. Some people look upon any delay as a tragedy, but the real difference has to do with whose neck is in the noose when the postponement of execution is decreed. In some cases it may mean only a temporary delay that is compensated for when the planet resumes its direct motion.

Judging by the rising pile of rehashed, recycled, recovered, and reworded junk piling up in my inbox these days, I’d say Internet Marketing has gone retrograde.

I hope your inbox doesn’t look like mine. I deliberately stay on the mailing lists of dozens of people who represent the three or four main schools of Internet Marketing sharks, er, gurus.  That way I stay in touch with what they’re selling these days.  Consider these offerings:

• A high priced, exclusive training course on how to sell search marketing to local businesses – billed a rate higher than most students can expect to make from the activity in a year. I ought to know, I tried to sell local businesses on the idea in 2006. (Hey Rockford, you remember, right?)

• Another chestnut from 2006 is being repackaged for the 2nd time in an attempt to squeeze one more dime out of the product. This time when the market bit at the 5,000 offered, the author got a bit too greedy and offered another 10,000. Last I read he’s still sitting on 2,000 of them. So much for fake scarcity.

• Speaking of chestnuts, there are literally hundreds of things every one of us can do to increase our sales results a little bit here and there. Last time out, these quick fixes were valued at $39. This time they’ll cost you $697.

• Five affiliates of one seller sent me the exact same message touting the templates and scripts for a social networking site so that I could start the “next Facebook.” I got mine when they were the ‘Giveaway of the Day’ 18 months ago.

• One last blooper was actually left in the final edit of the video sales pitch for one of the 3,750,000 products (I googled it) out there that will help you earn more with Twitter. The speaker said he earned $19,000 from Twitter. His interviewer said, “wow. I thought it was $5,000…”

All of these examples are throwbacks to the web 1.0 marketing tactics that we all said were to blame for the rise of web 2.0 “marketing democracy” and socialization. That’s retrograde behavior all right. And it comes at a good time.

When we have 101,000,000 “expert” offerings on how to use a social network that didn’t exist three years ago, the bloom is off the social rose. Even the gurus are “unfollowing,” shedding friends by the thousands and buffering themselves from the mob with Facebook fan pages these days because they admit they can’t stand the noise.

Maybe the planets are just about to swing through that last retrograde angle and appear to snap back into forward motion. It’s time to move on from here. Time to get out of the schoolyard where everybody cares a little too much about what everybody else thinks and get back to business.

You do what you do best, and I’ll do what I do best and if we need each other’s services we’ll pay for them. I’ll stop pretending to be an astrologist who can predict the future if you’ll stop pretending to be a marketer. Deal?